this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2024
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[–] [email protected] 6 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (1 children)

Fuck yeah, I love tactical controls. There's just something nice about something physical you can feel and manipulate.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 hours ago

Like, not dying while trying to go through menus while driving

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago

Never liked them. Modern smartphone is convenient , but a keyboard would be nicer

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

No I wouldn't say touchscreens are out, I would say augmenting them with physical buttons is about to get popular.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Plotnick, an associate professor of cinema and media studies at Indiana University in Bloomington, is the leading expert on buttons and how people interact with them.

I like that being a leading expert on buttons is a profession that exists in this world. You go Rachel Plotnick.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Leading expert on buttons says to use buttons?

Mild shock

Seriously though they are needed for many features especially cars or eyes away

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago

Leading expert on buttons says to use buttons?

It's exactly what Big Button wants you to think!!! Wake up sheeple!!!!!1!1!11

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Touch screens are shit tor buttons. They can be hacked. They can be unresponsive.

There's a load of other reasons, but either or both are enough to realise that a physical button is much safer. Perfect example of safety being lost in technology. Just because we can, doesn't mean we should.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

The worst is all the ones that cheaped out and put a resistive touchscreen. Making it 10 times worse.

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[–] [email protected] 52 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Touchscreens can stay, but only for non-essential tasks like changing settings or entering addresses. Climate, media, and all other controls you usually use while driving should be tactile by mandate.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 day ago

Here's my rule: Anything in my Chevy S10 that you control by turning a knob, moving a lever, or momentarily push a button? That needs to be a physical control in a car. Anything where you push and hold a button, or mash a button multiple times (like setting the clock or turning off the DRLs respectively) can be moved to a settings menu in a touch screen. These things shouldn't be done while moving.

And no, touch sensitive single-function panels like the climate controls in my father's Avalon are not good enough, it needs to be a mechanical control that you can feel for without activating.

[–] [email protected] 117 points 2 days ago (6 children)

They are more safe since people can feel the buttons without taking their eyes off of the road. I don't understand why they thought it was a good idea to use touchscreens.

[–] [email protected] 65 points 2 days ago (27 children)

It had nothing to do with being a good idea. It was just the more profitable idea. Tactile controls cost more to install than a cheap touchscreen with a dogshit GUI. Bonus being you have a proprietary part, the consumer can't easily swap out later if they want. So you've baked in some nice obsolescence to boot.

Ain't capitalism great? Race to the bottom.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (8 children)

That's true.

With a T9 phone, I used to be able to send a complete text message without ever taking my eyes off the road.

Now that I've got a touchscreen I'm swerving all over the place every time I try to text. It's way less safe.

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[–] [email protected] 143 points 2 days ago (15 children)

Can we address headlights that are brighter than the sun now?

[–] [email protected] 95 points 2 days ago (6 children)

my issue isn't really with the brightness, it's the height. Don't get me wrong bright headlights are annoying as fuck, but a huge ass truck behind me with their headlights literally higher than my back window is insane.

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[–] [email protected] 47 points 2 days ago

Should be illegal to have touchscreen controls in a car, it requires you to look at it to effectively control it, which means the car forces you to ignore the road to do anything.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Cool, now bring back single cab light trucks with full length beds.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (7 children)

Id settle just for a truck that isnt very clearly pandering "im a big boy!" energy. There all way too fucking big for no god damn reason other than validation of ego. Bunch of weak fucking man babies need some million ton 3 lane wide truck just so they can pretend theyre a big strong man to themselves and everyone else, despite never using the truck for what its purpose is supposed to be.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Thank god! Touch screens on the stuff in cars are a huge pain in the ass if you have hands as big as mine and the icons are all tiny

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[–] [email protected] 325 points 2 days ago (5 children)
[–] [email protected] 120 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 104 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (15 children)

Yeah, so the thing is, any amount of trust that I had has already been completely destroyed. "We don't do it anymore because it's illegal, trust me bro" isn't going to cut it. Does the bill include mandatory prison time for executives for violations, or just cost-of-doing-business fines? Will this be enforced by a government regulatory body that is not literally outnumbered 20:1 by car manufacturer lawyers?

If the car has any kind of network capabilities and 100% of the car's software is not open source, I'm not buying it. Period.

This bill would not need to exist if cars were FOSS, or if cars were non-networked. Those are the only 2 solutions that I will accept. This bill is worthless to me.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 19 hours ago

Why not both?

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 day ago (7 children)

The answer is tactile buttons with displays behind them. Not sure why nobody is doing this in cars...

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Because they are expensive. More importantly, how often does the function of a button is changed? Top right corner button on android is usually a back button (arrow/ x) or a profile icon. How often does a bottom navigation in an app change? Dashboard is an app that rarely changes.

I will do you one better. The screen in the button goes out. If the button changes the display based on the context, what does the button do? Is software responsible to recognize it cannot display an action and do something? What does it do? Should the user be responsible to remember what does the button do based on the context? This article is about return to physical buttons because they are reliable. Do you see any button on your cars dashboard that is unlabeled? Do you remember looking up in a manual what a weirdly iconed button does? On any piece of hardware.

This is from users perspecrtive alone.

Lets do the manufacturer. Imagine that screen buttons have SKUs. Dashboards have SKUs. Screen buttons have versioned drivers. Screen buttons need power delivery. Data lanes on pcbs. And fuck else.

Now imagine that you have a physical button. It costs cents. It closes one lane. Maybe needs power for a led.

Who the fuck wants screen buttons?

Finally. What the fuck multiple screen buttons solve that a single screen that can be any number of any buttons couldnt?

Because sure as fuck they wont solve for context, clarity and reliablity.

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[–] [email protected] 78 points 2 days ago (17 children)

I'm so glad I kept my car and weathered through this shitty phase of car manufacturing.

If only there was hope for weathering through the data collection, subscription-based features and the death of sedans though...

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[–] [email protected] 93 points 2 days ago (7 children)

Also, bring back gauges, instead of idiot-lights. It's nice to know when a problem is beginning (overheating, etc) before it becomes a crisis when you have no choice but to pull over.

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[–] [email protected] 207 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (9 children)

Touchscreens were never popular with customers. Manufacturers kept cramming touchscreens in cars and using them to control everything becuase they were being stupid with new tech.

Edit: I guess I should have been clearer. I was talking about as a replacement for tactile controlls in a car like the article is talking about. Reverse cameras and other things that are good to have a touch screen for make perfect sense but using your touch screen to control your Air conditioning in a way that you have to divert your attention from the road to operate sliders and buttons on a touch screen is dumb as hell.

[–] [email protected] 107 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Also the fact that touch screens are cheaper to build with how expensive battery tech has been in electric cars.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

Especially EV car makers need to take note.

[–] [email protected] 49 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (10 children)

Back in the 80s, Don Norman popularized the term affordance. Humans need something to push, pull, turn or otherwise interact with. We are physical beings in a physical world.

Driving vehicles is potentially life-endangering. Just because the technology is there and cheaper does not mean that humans can push aside their physiological limitations in a critical situation.

Take the emergency blinker. You know where it is, you see it all the time - it's right there in front of you! But when a real emergency happens, you'll be fumbling for the button, concentrating on the situation at hand. Now imagine that button on a touchscreen.

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[–] [email protected] 78 points 2 days ago

Yay, I never left having physical controls for things like HVAC controls and volume.

Touchscreens are great for context-sensitive controls, but less so for things that should be accessible at all times and usable without looking.

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